The Triangle Choke

Writing is a really important part of my life. This might not surprise you, given the literal hundreds of pieces I’ve written here on Substack.

Sometimes I like to write in order to understand something better. I’ve been a jiu jitsu instructor for more than 20 years now, and I’ve had lots of opportunities to observe the phenomenon of learning by teaching. This happens because I really want to make sure all of the concepts and details I’m sharing are accurate, lest I set someone down the wrong frustrating path.

I like bringing this mindset over here, where I can share something I think is interesting with you, and then we can talk about it in the comments. This is one of my favorite parts of my day, and I get a ton out of this sort of interaction!

Today is a little different, though. I want to share a subject I feel like I understand well already, so I’m not so much trying to grasp a better understanding myself, as to share the idea with you. I also thought this particular subject would be a good challenge, since I don’t really anticipate any of you getting on the ground with a friend to try this out (really sincerely, don’t do that).

I want to talk about how a triangle choke works today. I’m going to use some GIFs derived from videos of me doing this move in competition and in the classroom, so you can really see how and why this strangle can be effective.

If you’re already a jiu jitsu practitioner, you might really enjoy checking out BJJ Path. It’s a project I’ve been working on for over a decade now, and it’s an attempt to categorize jiu jitsu into an encyclopedic format. Check it out if you’d like; there’s no charge and there are no strings, but you do have to sign up.

Writing about jiu jitsu when I know you aren’t likely to practice the move means that I need to give you a sense of what you’d feel, and I’ll try to be somewhat precise about what’s really going on with our anatomy.

Triangle chokes aren’t really chokes at all, but instead are more properly classified as strangles. A choke implies that air can’t get to the lungs, whereas a strangle indicates that blood flow to the brain is inhibited.

Oxygen reaches the brain from the heart by way of two carotid arteries. These little tubes run through your neck near the front, and if you’ve ever taken someone’s pulse by pressing your finger and thumb up against the front of their neck, you are feeling these little life-giving pipelines.

Carotid arteries aren’t jugular veins! These are further around the side of your neck, and while they’re important, you can’t really put someone to sleep by pressing into them the way you can with carotid arteries.

Now, hold idea in your mind for a moment, and let’s take a look at how that might happen in a confrontation or altercation. If you have the person in front of you and you are on your back, you generally want to make use of your legs as well as your arms. The guard in jiu jitsu describes exactly this.

Typically, the person is encapsulated by your legs while they’re inside your guard, but if you can maneuver your legs so that they trap the head and arm of your partner, you have the makings of a powerful technique. You can think of this important first step as the entry or the setup, or even the catch if you’re into old-school terminology.

I’m not trying to focus too much on this capture component, but suffice it to say that there are lots of different ways this can happen. However, the finish generally relies on the same principles regardless of the setup, so that’s where our attention will turn for the remainder.

Once you’ve caught the triangle, you can work to create the conditions you’ll need to finish the submission. This means making sure both of those carotids are cut off, and the triangle gives you a nice boost to that end: their own arm will end up cutting off the flow of blood on one side.

The other side needs to be cut off with your inside thigh—my right leg in the GIF above. That hamstring really slices right into the side of their neck if you flex your foot and kind of chop down with your heel (try this now and see whether your hamstring feels sharper).

Meanwhile, that right leg—the one with the direct access to their neck—is reinforced by the other leg. How? That’s the beauty of the triangle position itself: the left leg bites down over the top of the right leg’s ankle, securing the enclosure like a seat belt clicking into position.

Sometimes you’ll need to pass their arm across to the other side of their neck, like I do in this GIF above. Otherwise, your legs might not be long enough to lock in that “seat belt click” I mentioned earlier. Closing the triangle fully like this amplifies it at least tenfold, no kidding.

Here’s a good look at me adjusting to make sure that hamstring cuts right into their neck:

What really makes the choke work is the clamping mechanism derived from that hinge you make behind your own knee. You can envision having someone’s head and arm in your triangle, then swinging your feet to the side so that they run parallel, ultimately squeezing your knees (and thighs) together in a vice:

Here it is with a human neck inside there. You can see how tight everything gets when I get perpendicular with my partner here, letting us both know that I attained the correct angle.

If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself that you would never allow something like this to happen, all I can suggest is for you to try a jiu jitsu class sometime, if you’re physically able to do so. I’ve seen thousands of misunderstandings like this quickly disabused, and it never gets old.

Suffice it to say that you can absolutely impose this on another person if you know what you’re doing, and you can put them to sleep quickly if you’re good at the move.

And, that’s pretty much it for the triangle choke! This is a move that has been with me for almost 30 years now, and I’ve won more matches with it than almost any other submission. I hope some of the nuance and complexity embedded within the technique came through here today.

Don’t try this at home.